


The past is just a story we tell ourselves

by ananbeth



Series: The Old Guard AU [5]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Found Family, Mild Gore, Temporary Character Death, The Old Guard AU, like its not excessive but fyi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:26:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26430091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ananbeth/pseuds/ananbeth
Summary: A look at the team through Beckendorf's eyes [The Old Guard AU]
Relationships: Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson
Series: The Old Guard AU [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1920832
Comments: 17
Kudos: 156





	The past is just a story we tell ourselves

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blackjacktheboss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackjacktheboss/gifts), [bipercabeth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bipercabeth/gifts).



> here we go again lol. thank u to the anon who sent me a prompt for this on Tumblr and thank u to soph for being my cheerleader and beta always <3 and thank u to Emma for being my greek translator!

At first, Charles found it overwhelming to hear their old stories, their memories that had been warped and misshapen by the hands of time. It was something he found truly too difficult to comprehend at times, how old they were. Reyna, at least, could give him numbers. She knew her birthday. She could tell him about the town she grew up in and died defending. She struggled to describe her sisters’ faces but recited their names like they were a vow she would not allow herself to forget. Forgetting was something - possibly the only thing other than losing their family - that Reyna feared.

The four of them would sit around a table with mismatched glasses of wine and tease stories out of each other as Charles soaked their words in, slowly becoming more comfortable and starting to ask his own questions, which the others welcomed. When he had first asked them,  _ how old are you? _ Percy and Annabeth had exchanged looks - and several unspoken words - and Percy had shrugged and told him they didn’t know.

“How can you not know?”

“Time was different then,” Annabeth told him, cryptic as ever. “It wasn’t recorded in the way things are now, not with these calendars.”

Charles had looked to Reyna, hoping for a mutual look of justified bafflement but she had smiled into her drink like she was enjoying the whole conversation immensely. 

“We first died during the Trojan War,” Percy had told him, seemingly taking pity. “Which historians are saying happened around 1200 BC.”

“But you were there. So you know when it was.”

Annabeth laughed, not unkindly. “Think about that date. It’s a subtraction, it’s thinking backwards from a date. When we were in it, it wasn’t called 1200 BC, because the whole Christ thing hadn’t happened yet.”

Charles emptied his glass and Reyna immediately leaned over to refill it, patting his shoulder sympathetically. Another thought came to him and he looked at them both sharply.

“So you don't know when your birthdays are?”

His question shocked a laugh out of them both and it was Annabeth who answered him.

“We were both born in the summer. And I was born first.”

Percy was shaking his head. “She doesn’t remember the Fall of Troy, but she remembers this.”

“Don’t listen to him, he’s a baby.”

“I mean, technically, I'm older because I died first,” Percy pointed out. One glance at Reyna told Charles this was an argument they'd had many times before.

“Why are you bragging about getting murdered?”

“Did you kill him?” Charles interjected, morbidly curious and made confident by the alcohol.

Annabeth was smiling when she looked up at him. “Not the first time.”

“Probably the second or third.”

“Total accident though.”

“How’d you accidently kill your ally?” Charles asked.

“A battlefield can be a chaotic place, as you know.”

“One time, I just really pissed her off though,” Percy joked and Charles truly hadn’t known whether to believe him or not.

“Well, she can’t be blamed for that,” Reyna said, earning a kick under the table which she huffed her small laugh at.

* * *

There was a safehouse in northern Italy which was more of a cave than a house. It didn’t have the luxuries of beds or a door or a proper fireplace, but it was safe, hidden. They needed to lay low for a while and didn’t want to separate, so this was the safest place for them to go that was close by.

This was also where Charles discovered some of the trinkets and memories that they had stored. Scrolls of damaged parchment with faded writing and scratched drawings, pendants and books and sculptures and paintings. It could be innocuous to an untrained eye, but for somebody who had been travelling with these three immortals for nearly thirty years, Charles cobbled together stories and memories which his companions could no longer form into words themselves. 

He was hungry for their history now, and often got to receive it in snippets

As the others started a small fire and started preparing some food for them all, Charles took a selfish moment to admire some of the art gathered in this space. One oil painting caught his eye. Half covered in a sheet and surrounded by an extravagant gilded frame, a familiar face stared back at him. Her brown eyes unforgiving and her jaw set in a way that told the admirer she was far above them in every way.

“Is this… Reyna?” he asked out loud, to nobody in particular.

He looked back to find the woman in question rolling her eyes with a small smile on her face. Meeting Charles’ eyes, she shrugged one shoulder as confirmation.

“Reyna was quite the muse, in the day,” Annabeth told him.

“Such a heartbreaker,” Percy agreed.

Reyna threw a stick which he caught just before it smacked him in the face.

“What do you mean?” Charles asked, rejoining them around the now crackling fire.

Percy was pouring them all a drink into little mismatched cups from a small canteen. It smelled like rum. He accepted his drink and crouched down next to them all, the first sip from his cup confirmed his guess. The alcohol burned a little as he swallowed.

Reyna shook her head, unwilling to comment, so Annabeth told the story for her. “We were in Spain, for a while. Between some jobs and trying to soak up the culture a bit. Percy and I never really used to make time for that, but Reyna insisted.”

“I did not insist on Spain,” Reyna felt the need to clarify. Her contempt towards Spaniards was already well recorded in Charles’ mind, though not as strongly as her hatred of the Dutch, for obvious reasons.

“Well, we ended up there anyway,” Percy cut in. “And Reyna mostly spent her time letting tortured artists believe they would be able to take her to bed.”

“I’m assuming they didn’t get that honour,” Charles asked.

Annabeth snickered. “No, but their wives did.”

Even Reyna cracked a smile as they all laughed. “His wife was particularly lovely. I recall her telling me that she had not known that women could orgasm. Poor thing.”

“I think you spent most of the eighteenth century liberating such women,” Annabeth said.

Percy lifted his cup. “Truly the best of us.”

“What a legacy,” Charles agreed.

Reyna nodded her head, like a bow.  _ “Muchísimas gracias.” _

They began preparing food in earnest then, as Percy, Annabeth, and Reyna regaled more stories from times gone by and Charles listened, enamoured by it all. He had already created his own stories with them but his mind flashed to years from now when he might have centuries worth of tales to tell with this family. He hoped to remember them all.

* * *

It was supposed to be a simple extraction job, though he supposes they are never really simple. A paid job, sourced by their new ex-CIA recruitment officer, Jason Grace. Somebody who Charles was still getting used to trusting after the stunt he pulled on their team a year ago.

They had scoped out the building carefully, Reyna had taken out their guards with meticulous precision using her sniper rifle, and Hazel - their newest and most technologically adept member - had made sure the cameras were taken care of. Then they had moved in like a wave of pure destruction, taking out each of the heavily armed guards with relative ease. Percy and Annabeth had paired off, taking Hazel with them, while Reyna and Charles covered the other side of the building in their sweep.

It had been Reyna who discovered the girls, locked in a room deep inside the building and staring at them both with wide, distrustful eyes. Charles had radioed the others to let them know and had heard the explosion interrupt Percy’s reply over the radio in an echo to the boom that shook the whole building in real time.

“They’re not answering.” His voice sounded shaky to his own ears as he and Reyna cajoled the imprisoned girls out of the building, after managing to earn their trust somehow. It most likely was encouraged by the whole building shaking apart after the explosion.

Reyna spoke gentle encouragement to the girls in their mother tongue and exchanged a look with Charles. He hadn’t seen her look worried on many occasions so the fear in her eyes made his stomach drop even further.

“Beckendorf.” The voice that cracked through the radio belonged to Hazel, sounding small and afraid. He swept it up to his mouth immediately.

“Hazel. What happened?”

“Explosion. We’re coming. Meeting point. But Annabeth-”

She didn’t finish and his heartbeat went into overdrive. 

“Hazel, what happened? Hazel! Is Annabeth okay?”

Another moment passed before the radio crackled again and Hazel’s voice came through with a shaky breath. “She’s not waking up.”

Reyna and Charles had managed to load the captive girls into the getaway trucks by the time the other three appeared, stumbling out of the building at their safe point. Well, two bodies stumbled, the other was limp in Percy’s arms. Charles felt his breath stumble out of his chest as Reyna gripped his arm too tight, like she might collapse if she didn’t hold onto him.

Percy’s face was covered in dust, along with the rest of him. His jaw looked like it had been wired shut and his mouth was a thin line as he carried Annabeth towards the truck. It took a moment for Charles to break out of his stupor to help him move Annabeth into the bed of the truck, keeping her distanced from the already traumatised girls who had all piled into the other vehicle which stood idle a few paces away. They didn't need to see the mess that Annabeth had become.

“Why won't she wake up?” Hazel asked quietly behind them. From the corner of his eye, Charles saw Reyna put her arm around the younger girl as she stared in horror.

“She’s not healing,” Percy said - ground out between his teeth.

Charles looked up at him. The both kneeled on either side of Annabeth’s unmoving body which did not appear to be repairing itself as it had done for millenia. Her chest was wide open, along with half the rest of her torso and Charles has seen them all sustain big injuries before. He has watched his own body stitch itself back together before his eyes. Usually they were already awake again as their bodies healed themselves, so they got to enjoy the sensation of their livers regrowing. But Annabeth’s eyes were lifeless.

“We need to move,” Reyna said distantly, sounding unconvinced by her own words.

Percy’s eyes snapped up to glare in her direction and Charles was sure he had never looked at her with malice before. He couldn’t imagine if Reyna shrunk back or met his gaze levelly.

“We’re not leaving her.”

“No one suggested that,” Charles said carefully. He looked back to Reyna. “We have some time before anyone else shows up?”

Reyna nodded curtly, her teeth gritted. Her eyes were on Annabeth again and Charles watched her shaky inhale. He suddenly couldn't look at her anymore. Her quiet pain was too painful to witness.

Percy reached for Annabeth then, dragging her shoulders up and cradling her head as he pressed his forehead against hers. Only then did Charles notice that Percy was still regrowing a couple of fingers and the bloody gash in his side was only just healing over.

“They came out of nowhere,” he heard Hazel saying behind him. “Percy had taken a bullet to the head and was still down and Annabeth must have seen the grenade before me because she threw me back and took the brunt of it. The explosion took the rest of the other side too so they were mostly dead when I came around but Annabeth was just lying there. We had to drag her out of there before Percy could carry her. Why isn’t she healing?”

“It’s alright, Hazel,” Reyna said. “You did everything right.”

“Please, Annabeth.” Percy’s voice was low and gravelly as he rocked them both on the dirty bed of the truck. “Wake up, _parakaló._ _Agapi mou,_ _fíltatos_ _. Xypníste_ _._ Annabeth. _Min me afíseis._ ”

_ Please. My love, most beloved. Wake up. Don't leave me. _

Charles had known Percy as a soldier, an eternal warrior with an unwavering kindness to those who deserved and a deadly judgement to those who didn’t. He had seen malice in those eyes and ruthlessness in the strike of his sword. He was reborn in battle, in the bloody mess of it all, and he fought like a viper, an unstoppable earthshaker of force.

Charles had never thought he would see Percy broken down in this way. He suddenly looked like a child and not like the ancient he was as he held the love of his life in his arms and wept and begged for her to come back to him. All Charles could do was stare at the scene before him, a greek tragedy come to life.

He stared at the unmoving corpse of his leader until, wait. Until it was not unmoving any more.  _ There. _ Her chest moved, fibres began to string together, breaching across the gap of carnage that had become her body.

“Percy,” he began to say, but Annabeth’s ragged breath silenced him.

She groaned gutterally and her hands swung up, finding Percy’s shoulders as she rocked up into him. Behind him, Reyna’s sigh of relief was palpable, grief clung to that small sound as it escaped her. They were still whole.

_ “Efcharistó tous theoús,” _ Percy breathed, his voice thick with tears as he and Annabeth clung to one another.  _ “Me tromáxes tóso polý.” _

_ Thank the gods. You scared me so much. _

Annabeth groaned in pain but managed to cup the back of his neck and tell him,  _ “Eímai edó, eímai edó.” _

_ I’m here, I'm here. _

“We need to leave,” Charles said.

This time, Percy nodded, barely moving his head away from Annabeth’s. “Can you drive?” he asked.

“Yeah, boss. We got you.”

He reached out to squeeze Annabeth’s shoulder before jumping out from the bed of the truck and circling to the drivers door. Reyna and Hazel had already moved to the other truck but before she climbed into the driver's seat, Reyna looked back to catch his eye and nodded. The simple exchange spoke a thousand words, but most importantly they said,  _ We’re okay. We’ll be okay. _

And as he stepped on the accelerator to speed out of there, he believed those words. He also wouldn't mind forgetting this particular memory, if he could.


End file.
